I was never really satisfied with any of the Mattel releases of Mr. Freeze. They all seemed to take too much of a cue from Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in the films: giving us someone with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a former Mr. Universe. Really, though, how could Victor have justified taking all that time away from finding a cure for his wife in order to do all that bodybuilding?
I started with a Battle Suit Lex Luthor, which (as some may point out) is almost the same base, but if you look closely, there are some important differences. I ground down that upper torso as much as I dared, and sculpted over the top of that. My goal was to strike a look that evoked the old bell diving suits, blended with some steampunk and with some art deco, and overall just looked believable and industrial. The dome is, naturally one of those gumball machine capsule things. The head is a DC Universe Classics Metamorpho (his pale skin, sharp features, and mildly smug grin were PERFECT for what I was after) with the goggles sculpted over. The cryo-pack thing on his back is a "communicator" from an old Batman-Superman two pack, with the center ground out and replaced with a shoulder piece of the sentinel that came with the New X-Men Wolverine from the X-Men Classics line. That attaches to his back with a magnet. The tubes, back of the belt, and bit that plugs in behind the helmet are from a DC Universe Classics Gorilla Grodd. The gun was some sort of assault rifle for a 12-inch figure, but I cut off a lot of the details (clip, sight, barrel, etc.). I like using the grip as the barrel because it has that corrugated ridge pattern that you see in some scientific reaction chambers that involve extreme temperatures.
I love the level of detail in the sculpt on the base, and frankly it's a crime that the manufacturer has never made full use of all that amazing detail, so I tried to bring it out more. I painted it with three "layers", the black rubber bodysuit, a metallic blue layer of armor that goes over that, and a silver layer of armor that goes over that. Any further detail on top of that (little pipes and rivets and such) I painted copper. I was worried about using such a "warm" color on Mister Freeze, but I wanted to hit those steampunk notes.
In the end, he looks pretty much exactly what I wanted a Mr. Freeze figure to look like for my collection.